Girl groups continue dominating domestic music charts

Circle Chart's Global K-pop chart on Tuesday afternoon [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Girl group domination continues on this week’s major domestic music charts, with a refreshing sprinkle of male ballad singers also seeing success in the idol-dominated Korean music scene.

As of Tuesday afternoon on Circle Chart's Global K-pop Chart, girl group Le Sserafim’s “Antifragile” was at No. 1, followed by (G)I-DLE’s “Nxde,” Blackpink's “Shut Down” and “Pink Venom,” NewJeans’s “Hybe Boy,” BTS Jin's “The Astronaut,” IVE’s “After LIKE,” Younha’s “Event Horizon,” NewJeans’s “Attention” and Zico’s “New Thing” finishing at No. 10.

Melon Chart — which tends to take streaming more into account and thereby reflects a song’s popularity among the general public — had Younha’s “Event Horizon” at top, followed by (G)I-DLE’s “Nxde,” Le Sserafim’s “Antifragile,” NewJeans’s “Hype Boy,” Zico’s “New Thing,” IVE’s “After Like,” Crush’s “Rush Hour” featuring J-Hope of BTS, NewJeans’s “Attention,” Lim Young-woong’s “Love Always Runs Away” and Tei’s “Monologue.”

Differing from its high rankings on Circle Chart, Blackpink could not be seen on Melon’s Top 10.

Five of the songs on Melon Chart’s top 10 are by girl groups, and that number rises to seven on the top 10 of Circle Chart.

Excluding BTS member J-Hope featured on rapper Crush’s song and another BTS member Jin’s solo debut song, none of the songs on the top 10 are by a boy band. In fact, on this week’s chart, male soloists such as rapper Zico, trot singer Lim and ballad singer Tei are notably showing strong performances, considering that non-idol soloists tend to have relatively smaller fandoms compared to K-pop groups, especially boy bands. Lim and a few other popular male singers in trot, a genre of upbeat music popular among elderly Koreans, has been a consistent outlier to this phenomenon.

“New Thing” by Zico is also proving to be a long-running hit. Created as a theme song for Mnet’s dance competition show “Street Man Fighter,” the hip-hop track topped several domestic music charts in September and is still in the top ranks. “Attention” by NewJeans has also maintained its high spot since being released on Aug. 1 and immediately rising to No. 1.

The most noticeable different between this week’s Circle Chart and Melon Chart is the large gap between BTS member Jin’s solo song “The Astronaut,” which dropped on Oct. 28. While the song is at No. 6 on Circle’s Global K-pop Chart, it ranks at No. 57 on Melon Chart. This is a considerable difference for charts on the same day, suggesting that while Jin is seeing high CD sales thanks to his group’s large and loyal fandom ARMY, the general public’s actual streaming of “The Astronaut” falls relatively farther behind.

Meanwhile, ballad singer Younha’s “Event Horizon” has had an interesting rise to the top. The ballad number dramatically “climbed the charts” as K-pop fans say when a song becomes a late-bloomer hit months or even years after its original release.

“Event Horizon” dropped in March and was out of the music charts’ top 100 by September. However, after Younha performed the number live on college campuses during the autumn festival season, the song garnered word-of-mouth popularity and is currently topping domestic streaming charts. However, because female soloists and especially ballad singers tend to have relatively smaller global fandoms, it is ranking at No. 8 on Circle’s Global K-pop Chart.

BY HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]